Einigkeit Macht Stark
by Ninjagrrl
Summary: Schwarz and Weiss mix to make.. Lila? So, unfortunately those mysterious psychic all girl assassin teams who keep appearing in the Weiss universe stole all the cool colour names. Humour.
1. Chapter 1

**Einigkeit Macht Stark**

Author's Notes- Three chapters of this stuff somehow wrote itself while I was supposed to be working on an assignment the other day. It's been a long time since I wrote any humour, but any constructive criticism is welcome :s

Warnings- Do I really need to say some characters might be a bit less than heterosexual? Probably swearing, no real character bashing or anything like that, more making fun of how they're stereotypically represented.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. This is non-profit and written purely for fun. No copyright infringement is intended.

"..And so, for now you will now be working with Schwarz," Birman concluded, beaming at the speechless assassins. It was actually the seventh or eighth time she had gone through the speech and concluded it with that very sentence, but she was mildly worried that they all seemed to be completely frozen. Finally, there was a small movement. Omi waved his hand frantically.

"Since we're temporarily joining together and all, do we get a cool new team name?" Omi asked after a long pause. Birman raised an eyebrow. He was taking this remarkably well. Not many men would put on such a brave face when being forced to work alongside an equally-sexy-and-dangerous team of assassins.

"Oooh!" Ken bounced in his chair. "I've got it! _Grau!_ Because they're black, and we're white, and..."

"Yes, Ken, we're all _way_ ahead of you," Youji sighed. He'd already thought of this, when he'd idly considered working alongside Schwarz. Which absolutely wasn't most nights.

"We were thinking of something a little more original," Birman said tactfully. "We decided on Lila,"

"Lila?" Aya had to temporarily cease lurking in the background looking all stoic and mysterious to speak up.

"It's German for purple. It seems all the good colours are already used up by all those mysterious all-girl psychic assassin teams that just sprout up out of nowhere and attempt to get into your pants," Birman shrugged. "Originally we were going to take the 'Sch' from Schwarz and the 'Eiss' from Weiss and rename the team Scheisse, and then thankfully we cleared it with Schuldig first. Turns out it means.. well, someone in Marketing is really going to get it for that one!" She laughed nervously. "Just be thankful you're not posted over in America. We've got teams Magenta, Puce and Peagreen working over there. The drug dealers and evil corporate overlords just can't keep a straight face while they're being mercilessly hunted down and denied their collective tomorrows,"

"Hn," Aya straightened up. Always leaning casually against the wall during mission briefs was murder on his back, even if it did make him look at least 20 percent more menacing. Combined with his favourite comfy orange sweater and "Cherry Passion" hairdye, it was surely a lethal look that struck fear into the heart of any nearby Dark Beast. "Then I suppose there's nothing to say about it,"

"Nothing?" Birman looked doubtful. "You're not going to storm off again? Leave the team?"

"Nope," Omi cut in. "He isn't. Absolutely nothing we can do. We're screwed. Got to join them. When do we start?"

"Er, they're moving in tomorrow for some reason that will not be explained," Birman said as she began discreetly backing up the stairs. Omi really was taking this far too well.

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"Are you sure this is where Schwarz live?" Ken asked doubtfully. Two flower baskets filled with lilacs hung over the (pink) door of the small apartment. A name plate announced this was 'Honeysuckle Cottage', a somewhat misleading name for a small inner city apartment on the sixth floor. A ceramic garden gnome waved cheerfully at him from next to a 'Welcome!' mat. When he pressed the doorbell, it played what sounded suspiciously like the tune to "Mary Had a Little Lamb". For some reason, Omi had insisted they help Schwarz move their things over to the flower shop. But fortunately it looked like he'd got the wrong address.

"Hey, is that doorbell playing-" Omi began

"Yes. Yes, it is," Schuldig snapped, opening the door. "Crawford insisted we keep a low profile, alright? Like anyone who runs a flower shop has any room to talk-" This was clearly a sore point for Schuldig. Bringing ladies back home to Honeysuckle Cottage.. well, it would get to anyone after a while.

"Well, come in and make yourselves useful," Schuldig sighed, waving his hand in the general direction of the apartment. "Mind the boxes and don't pat Farfarello. He bites,"

The flat was almost empty, with boxes stacked around the bare kitchen and neatly labelled with colour-coordinated stickers, courtesy of Crawford. There was what definitely appeared to be a reward chart stuck on the fridge door, with small sticky gold stars next to Schuldig, Farfarello and Nagi's names, each written in a different colour. Ken looked closer at the latest stars.

'Today Schuldig didn't make Nagi think it was a good idea to eat Crawford's socks. Good work, Schuldig!'

'Nagi didn't telekinetically force Schuldig into a dress once today. Well done, Nagi!'

'Farfarello let Schuldig watch _Father Ted_ reruns without a lecture in theology. Keep it up, Farfarello! Even if you were actually sedated and straitjacketed at the time'

"Yeah, well. Crawford'll make you a star chart and house rules too," Schuldig said sourly, having blurred into the room with remarkable speed and nearly collided with an enormous stack of boxes, all filled with burned CDs which Nagi had labelled as "Homework", "More Homework", "Really Boring Homework You Don't Want To Look At, Especially You Schuldig". He worried about that boy sometimes. It really wasn't healthy to use up all their bandwidth and burn ten discs a day downloading files on "Atomic, molecular and optical physics".

"House.. rules?" Omi said blankly. "In our house?"

"Only if you want to stay alive," Schuldig scowled. "You're living with four easily-aggravated bad guys. One of whom can turn you inside by thinking about it, another who can kill you six different ways before you hit the floor, a third who can implant various lewd and/or hilarious suggestions in your mind, and a fourth who... well, Crawford might flash his shiny glasses at you," Schuldig ended somewhat lamely. "Or if it's going to rain, he _might not tell you to take an umbrella!_ So if the _homo superior_ tell you to keep the milk in the fridge or squeeze the toothpaste from the end, not the middle... well, I suggest you do it," Damn, that sounded menacing. He preened a little.

"Homo superior," Ken giggled.

"Did you nick that from X-Men?" Omi asked suspiciously. Schuldig stiffened.

"Oh, hello," Farfarello said amicably, wandering into the room and depositing a pile of boxes on the floor. "Can I paint my cell a different colour this time? I'm getting bored of Asylum White and I've got some lovely wallpaper samples.." He wandered back out, stepping aside to let Nagi past as the boy idly strolled out the apartment and down to the van, apparantly unconcerned by carrying two or three times his own weight in boxes. Omi looked on adoringly.

"Bloody telekinetic showoffs," Schuldig said moodily, staggering under Farfarello's knife collection and a suitcase filled with some of Crawford's spare extra-shiny glasses. "Wait one minute.."

"Oh, don't trouble yourself with those big heavy boxes," Ken said suddenly, a blank look in his eyes. "Here, let me.."

Schuldig sniggered to himself as the others set off downstairs carrying most of Schwarz's posessions between them. He glanced around the empty apartment, and set off, locking up behind himself.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Schwarz moving in was surprisingly uneventful. Well, apart from Nagi disappearing for an hour, but thankfully he explained he'd took the wrong turn, got lost in Omi's room and couldn't find the way out. The poor boy was all out of breath from navigating the uncharted wilds of Omi's bedroom, bless him. Schuldig was beginning to get worried. Now that all teammates were encountered for, Schu was sat comfortably in the Weiss kitchen having a nice cup of tea and being suspiciously un-suspicious. He had to be up to something.

"Where are the others?" Aya asked, wondering what he could be up to.

"Nagi and Omi are doing homework in Omi's room," Schuldig said. "Atomic, molecular and optical physics, apparently. Funny, that, since they're in different grades and there's a perfectly good computer right there," He shrugged. "Crawford apparently Saw a 50 percent off sale starting in ten minutes on his favourite anti-anti-glare glasses and Farfarello is either out stabbing things or thinking about things to stab,"

"Speaking of which, we're running low on priests here. I think he's already used them all up," Omi said worriedly, as he came wandering in. He looked awfully tired. Schuldig shook his head sadly. Atomic, molecular and optical physics always had that effect on Nagi too. "Is there not anything else he'd be interested in stabbing? Specifically, things that aren't us?"

"Probably," Schuldig shrugged. "Though, come to think about it... for the purposes of staying alive, Siberian, you're now Hindu. Balinese is a Satanist, Bombay is pagan and Abyssinian here is a devout followerer of the Flying Spaghetti Monster,"

"The what?" Aya asked flatly.

"I dunno, it's your religion," Schuldig shrugged. "I'd go build a shrine just to be on the safe side,"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Some hours later, Omi walked past Aya, who was grumpily attempting to build a sculpture entirely out of cold spaghetti in the corner of his room. He paused to watch Aya's attempts. The entire structure slowly slid back into a formless heap. He sniggered.

"Please do not question my beliefs," Aya said coolly, turning the Shi-ne look up full force. "The Flying Spaghetti Monster is most vengeful towards those who insult his followers,"

On the other hand, Yohji was having the time of his life flipping through the Satanist bible. "Everything's allowed!" he said gleefully. "Hey, look- 'if a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy'. It goes against my religion to be nice to Schwarz," He went back into the kitchen to find Schuldig and tell him the good news.

All of Schwarz were already there, eating. Yohji had always had the impression Farfarello would eat some sort of small animal. Perhaps toasted on a stick until it stopped squirming, if he was in polite company. Instead, he was currently nibbling his way through a small salad.

"Vegans hurt God!" Farfarello said proudly, pointing to his Meat Is Murder tshirt. He pointed to his Bible. Just under a reference to God giving humans custody over all animals, Farfarello had drawn a little smiling cow and a grumpy looking face with a knife stuck through it.

"God _really_ hates people washing up dishes," Schuldig said hopefully.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness," Farfarello retaliated, dumping Nagi's juice on the floor to illustrate his point.

"Luckily, he was quite happy to shower when we started buying strawberry-scented sparkly pink shower gel," Crawford observed. "Nor effeminate shall inherit the kingdom of God,"

"That's why I like Schuldig!" Farfarello crowed. "I'm going to go get pretty," And with that, the Schwarz madman left the table.

"It's okay. I 'forgot' to pack Farfarello's collection of pretty dresses," Nagi said, telekinetically floating a new glass of juice over to himself. "It's really quite difficult to convince your clients that you're Very Evil Indeed when your Beserker is simpering around in a pretty blouse and a nice skirt,"

Crawford looked as though he had a migraine coming on. "You two go.. do whatever kids do!" He snapped, attempting to waft Omi and Nagi out of the apartment. The two assassins shrugged, and wandered outside.

"What do kids our age do anyway?" Nagi asked doubtfully.

"I dunno," Omi shrugged. "When I was your age, it was mostly learning how to infiltrate government buildings or lessons in how to kill a man eight different ways using any of the commonly-found objects in your average living room. You wouldn't believe what I can do with a bowl of ornamental wax fruit, a potted rubber plant and a framed photograph of the grandchildren,"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Their very first mission together came up that night. Nothing too unusual, just the sort of night's work that they were used to - killing some dealer of drugs, or a creator of tentacled beasts, raiser of Rosenkreuz deities, stabber of innocent passing nuns.. all much the same thing after a while. They had already managed to get into the target's garden and were currently lurking behind a flowerbed deciding where to go from here.

"Wait! We won't let you!" A voice cried out. One that managed to at once be spunky and yet incredibly feminine. This was never a good sign. The team turned around. A drop-dead beautiful woman was facing them down. Floor-length hair swirled around her, turning from black at the roots to lilac at the very tips. Her sparkling amythest orbs (the EXACT colour of Aya's!) surveyed the teams, one hand upon her hip and the other easily wielding an eight foot long sword that instantly made Aya feel inadequate. To her side was a somewhat more angsty looking girl with black hair, streaked with dye to resemble flames. Her emerald eyes were heavily lined in black and six piercings adorned her perfect features, which were only enhanced by a single delicate little scar just over her eye. Her twin daggers were coated with blood and Farfarello felt mildly jealous that for the fifth time this month, he'd been out-crazied by some random female assassin who had just burst out of the woodwork. The last girl had sapphire orbs, scarlet ringlets, the smallest outfit of the lot and was brandishing a chain whip. Every one of them had curves in all the right places and miniscule outfits to show them off.

"Yeah!" The first girl cried triumphantly. "We're not going to let Lila kill these targets. What do you think of THAT, an all-female assassin grou-"

"What, like Schreient?" Omi asked, perplexed.

"Oh, shut up!" A frown crossed her stunning features as she raised her sword with ease, despite weighing around a hundred pounds (and most of that weight adorning the perfect orbs upon her chest). "Prepare to die, Lila-"

Omi shot her.

"I don't get it," Ken said, bemused, slicing up AngstGirl as she leapt on him with a war cry. "Why do they always think we'll be shocked at a team of female assassins? This is the third team we've met in under a week. Where the hell do they keep coming from? I reckon Farfarello has the right idea about God hating us. Someone up there certainly does,"

"Who knows?" Aya shrugged, decapitating the wounded amethyst-orbed girl as she bit him in the ankle. It was getting awfully tedious having to keep putting a fresh edge on his katana from cutting up too many stunning, psychic assassins. Yohji was busily sawing his wire through the redhead's throat, apparently quite unmoved by her exotic, ethereal beauty and really massive norks.

"What a mess," Omi scrunched his nose up at the bits of lady-assassin strewn all over the lawn. "Let's get on with finding the target. Me and Nagi'll check the bedrooms,"

"OK," Schuldig said, oblivious. "The first floor.. Ken and Farfarello. You both like stabbing things, you'll get on great. Crawford can go check the garden with Aya, because Aya's hair will clash terribly with mine. Me and Yohji will take the ground floor,"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Once everyone else had slipped away, Crawford began squelching his way through a row of petunias while Aya carefully scrutinized the tomatoes for any signs of hiding drug dealers.

"Nothing here. Crawford, go check out that compost heap,"

"I see no criminals hiding behind the compost heap in the nearby future," Crawford replied serenely. "The Oracle sees all," Also, the Oracle does not want to go squishing around in rotting potato peelings.

"Then where are criminals hiding in the nearby future?" There was silence. Aya resisted the urge to stick his tongue out.

"..The future works in mysterious ways" Crawford replied. "But I _can_ tell you that Ken's going to be all out of clean socks tomorrow, and if I hadn't warned you, you'd have confused Schuldig's 'Tangerine Dream' dye for 'Cherry Passion' next time you touched up your roots,"

"..." Aya shot his most dangerous shi-ne look.

..Crawford countered with his deadliest glasses-flash.

The sky darkened, there was a crack of thunder above and several rows of pansies instantly wilted under the combined strength of the shin-ne face and the shiny glasses.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ken and Farfarello had finished checking the top floor and found nothing more sentient than a small pot plant, which Farfarello had decapitated just to be sure. Since there was no word from the others, they moved down to the next floor.

Farfarello suddenly sniggered.

"What's funny?" Ken asked.

"Schuldig just sent me an image of Yohji finding out he'd replaced his wire with dental floss," He paused, then winced. "Ouch, that's got to hurt. Not that I'd know and all,"

"What's your special power anyway?" Ken asked the Beserker as they entered what looked like a small art gallery.

"I beserk," Farfarello replied politely, effectively killing the conversation as they checked the place was clear.

"How exquisite!" Farfarello said admiringly, stopping in front of a painting. "An elegant juxtaposition of European neo-expressionism and Harlem renaissance,". Ken looked deeply confused.

"Sorry," Farfarello said apologetically. "I'll try again,". He licked his knife and leapt out the nearest window with a "Yiyiyiyiyiyi!" noise.

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Nagi and Omi stealthily crept throughout the house, making their way towards the living room. Yet _another_ all-girl assassin team had shown up just as they were checking the bathroom for hiding drug lords. They had managed to get away safely and relatively unmolested, although Omi has lost his crossbow when he'd ended up chucking it at one of the girls in despair after she began running after him, ranting about how a crooked politician had her entire family burned alive, stabbed with the business end of teaspoons and then run over with steam rollers, just to get to her and her magical pyrokinetic powers that had caused her nothing but misery.

"I think we lost them," Nagi said nervously, wishing they could just encounter some armed security guards or mutated tentacled monster-things like they usually did.

"Wait! I hear something!" Omi hissed, diving dramatically across the corridor, rolling and hiding himself behind a small, ornamental coffee table. Nagi struck a pose next to a statue of an armless, naked lady and hoped no one would notice he wasn't made of marble.

"Through there," Omi whispered, indicating a door. They crept towards it stealthily to overhear what shady deals were going on inside. At least that was the idea, since Omi tripped over his shoe laces and the pair of them fell straight through it.

"Meep!" cried the drug lord in a startled manner, popcorn flying everywhere as he jumped to his feet. In the background, _Come Home Lassie_ continued playing on an enormous cinema-size TV screen that dominated the cosy, tastefully decorated living room.

"Are you sure this is the right house?" Nagi asked, untangling himself from Omi with some reluctance. "Oh no, sorry, that's _your_ left buttock-"

"Yes, it is," Omi replied, feeling around reflexively for his crossbow and grabbing Nagi instead. "Er, yes to both my left buttock and the right house. There was that meth lab in the basement, that crazy junkie who tried to steal your pants.. not to mention we had to climb over a thirty-foot electrified fence surrounded by genetically modified rabid dinosaurs just to get in,"

"You've lost your weapons!" The man said triumphantly, pulling out his gun. "Prepare to di-"

Blood sprayed everywhere as Omi proceeded to kill the man using a bowl of ornamental wax fruit, a potted rubber plant and a framed photograph of the grandchildren.

Nagi looked on, admiringly. A second later there was an enormous explosion as a bomb went off upstairs.

"Oh no!" Omi cried. "The building's falling in!" The two boys hugged each other as the world began crashing in around them.

"It's okay," Nagi whispered. "I don't mind dying.. so long as it's with you,"

"Oh, Nagi!" Omi's eyes filled with tears. "I've always loved you. I'm just glad I got to say this one time before we... wait, you're a bloody telekinetic!"

"Oh yeah," Nagi said sheepishly, and stopped an enormous piece of ceiling before it squashed the pair of them. He casually flung it into the corner of the room. "Better go check on the others," The pair of them skipped out through the falling debris, holding hands.

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After clearing their areas, the rest of Lila had made their way into the house, just in time to get caught in the explosion as the bomb went off. Aya swore in a decidedly not-stoic-and-mysterious manner as an enormous piece of ceiling nearly took off the tip of his nose. Ken leapt across an enormous chasm that was opening up in the floor underneath them. Part of the ceiling had already caved in, closing off escape down the stairs. "Hold me!" Schuldig screeched, leaping into Yohji's arms as a second explosion blasted him out of one of the rooms. Crawford came running out after him, dragging a furious Farfarello along by his collar.

"Farfarello wants to kill things!" Farfarello shouted indignantly, squirming in his grasp. Crawford smacked him across the nose with a rolled-up newspaper he apparantly carried around in his pocket.

Then they all fell silent, instinctively covering their heads as there was an enormous rumble above them. Dust began to rain down as cracks raced across the walls. Schuldig permitted himself one last, girly scream as the entire ceiling began to crumble..

And stopped, held up by something. Something long and noodly and surrounded by a serene white glow..

"Saved!" Aya cried in rapture. "By his noodly appendage! Oh, Flying Spaghetti Monster, thank you for your mercy towards the faithful-"

"Your God is _real_," Farfarello said, awed as Nagi telekinetically cleared the debris and allowed Lila to escape the crumbling building.

Mission complete.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Notes- Thank you all so much for reviewing- I made excited squeeing noises and did the 'Review Dance' over each one. I was especially worried about this as I haven't tried writing humour in a long time, so I really needed that reassurance that it was okay. As always, concrit is very welcome (and so is any feedback at all).

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters and concepts. This is non-profit and no copyright infringement is intended.

Oh, and there's two lines here that I've used in various contexts for so long I can no longer remember their origin. Extensive googling and asking around suggests they are indeed the product of a friend's/my own mind, but if you see something that's blatantly robbed from somewhere, do let me know and I'll credit appropriately.

Warnings- The next two chapters will probably include swearing, things-that-aren't-Lila dying, probably quite black humour and everyone's caught the gay.

Oh, and again, _mild_ mockery of certain fanfiction phenomena comes up later in these next two chapters, with two characters who are sort of parodies of fanfic writers (one het, one yaoi fangirl). I hope no one is offended by this and thinks I'm mocking everyone who writes any of the concepts I've mentioned. I promise I'm not, and I do/like most of the things mentioned- I adore well-done angst, I kill off characters, I shove them into the most unlikely relationships, I use fanon cliches that never actually appear in the series, I like well-developed original characters.. but I also see a lot of potential for fun if a Weiss villain somehow acquired the power to use these things against them ;)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In hindsight, assigning Schwarz to shifts in the flower shop probably wasn't a great idea. Although yes, she did get a sadistic sort of pleasure seeing Crawford arranging petunias, Birman had only really wanted to be fair. If Weiss were forced to go undercover and be badass assassins by night, seller of pretty flowers by day, then Schwarz should too. It's just that she had failed to take into account the potentially devastating effect it would have on the business if it were run by formerly evil psychic assassins of questionably loyalty.

The shop opened as usual. A horde of squealing schoolgirls raced in, skidded to a halt and began frantically trying to back up, thwarted by the fangirls still rushing in behind them.

"Come and buy your lovely posies," Crawford growled from the till, apparently throttling a bunch of flowers he was waving around to emphasise his point. "All the ...pretty bouquets you could ever want,"

"Yes," Nagi said flatly, a look of quiet despair on his face. "Lovely, lovely flowers,"

"Oh, come on," Schuldig said, annoyed. He'd just tried out his most sultry pout to neutralise the effect of the overalls and the bunches of roses clashing horribly with his hair, only for a young girl gave him a horrified look and dive behind the nearest flower arrangement. "Nagi's as cute as Omi, Crawford's taller, darker _and_ grumpier than Aya, I have the roguish good looks of an 80s hair metal band, and chicks dig scars, right?"

"Pretty flower?" Farfarello asked, offering the nearest fangirl a daisy, and looking hurt when she screamed and threw a small potted cactus at him.

Surprisingly, Schwarz didn't do too badly. Schuldig planted a sudden longing for giant bouquets of roses into passing pedestrians' minds. Nagi surreptitiously floated extra flowers over into customers' shopping baskets when they weren't looking. Crawford flashed his glasses menacingly if they dared to protest and say that they hadn't _meant_ to pick up three flower arrangements. And Farfarello leapt out from behind a large display of buttercups waving a pair of secateurs whenever it looked like one might get away without making a purchase. Not a single fangirl was killed, although one lost a braid to Farfarello's secateurs and Birman considered herself to get off lightly when she showed up with a mission and was mistaken for one of the schoolgirls, but escaped with only a unfortunate haircut and a lingering yearning for a giant bouquet of fluffy red imported roses and fabulously rare rainforest orchids, all wrapped up in a pure silk bow and preferably delivered by a naked Schuldig.

"Men of Lila!" Even a computer-generated image of Persia had a difficult time saying that with a straight face. "You are now the targets! Many of Rosenkreuz's most useful clients have been taken out by Lila, and they have released their most dangerous members to deal with you. Their names are YaoiRoxx and MistressCalicoFujimiya,"

There was a gasp from the former Schwarz members. Nagi fainted.

"They appear as ordinary young girls, yet they have the power to literally _bring their fantasies to life!_" Persia continued. "They may completely cripple Lila by radically altering your personalities, bringing in a new member or forcing you into tormented, angst-filled relationships inevitably spiralling into drugs and self-harm. They may even kill you by forcing you into suicide pacts with each other, or by using Farfarello as a convenient plot device! I cannot stress how much of a threat they are,"

Three images appeared on the screen.

"The man on the right is your immediate target," Persia continued. "His name is Sadato Takahashi, another corrupted politician involved in miscellaneous shady dealings and the like. But more importantly, he is Rosenkreuz's main contact who will bring YaoiRoxx and MistressCalicoFujimiya to Japan. Take him out, and you may stall their arrival,"

As soon as the video had finished and Birman had left, borrowing Omi's hat to cover her new haircut, Lila got to work. This mostly consisted of Omi going online and formulating a plan while everyone else listened to Schuldig and Crawford sharing horror stories about their newest targets' special powers.

"Hmm," Omi said. "According to the Little Sunshines Preschool website, Takahashi is planning to hold a big costume party for his daughter Mitsuko's sixth birthday. It's the perfect opportunity! Politicians from all over Japan will be there, and in costume we can just walk right in,"

"Or.. we could just infiltrate the way we always do, with our sneaky, ninja-like ways? With the breaking-in and killing of security guards and the not-attending-of-childrens'-birthday-parties?" Ken asked hopefully.

"But I never had a proper birthday party growing up, at least not one I can remember," Omi's lower lip wobbled. "Please can't I attend just one, even if it's only to murder half the people there?"

"Aww," Ken ruffled Omi's hair affectionately. "Of course you can. Hey, and once we're done murdering her parents, why don't we steal his daughter's birthday cake, all the presents and the decorations, and carry on the party back at our place? It'll be fun!"

"Yay!" Omi and Nagi cheered. And that was how they all later found themselves in a costume shop, trying to find a cunning disguise for the night.

"No, Yohji!" Ken dragged Yohji away from a rack filled with tiny, sparkly little numbers.

"Why not?" Yohji asked indignantly. He was staring longingly at an outfit that appeared to consist of a small, glittery sock, some fluffy maribou strands, a couple of pompoms and nothing else.

"Because all of the women and many of the men in Japan have already seen you naked," Ken snapped. "We don't want someone seeing you in a thong and recognising you by your very distinctive left buttock,"

"Well," Yohji said, flattered, turning around to examine the offending body part. "I have to admit that in all my years of being exposed to hardcore nudity, I have never found another buttock with quite its charms-"

"Here, wear this," Ken shoved the first non-revealing costume he saw in Yohji's general direction.

"It's too short," Yohji said. "Unless you mind me showing off four inches of rear cleavage-"

"We don't have many outfits with trousers that will fit someone of your height. Most of our larger sizes are already hired out for some party tonight," The shop assistant said apologetically, suddenly popping up from behind a rack of fake beards and comedy, over-sized glasses. "Your friend over there already had to choose our 'Sexy Schoolgirl' outfit,"

"Damn Schuldig!" Yohji scowled. "I wanted that one,"

"How about a 'Naughty Nurse'?" The assistant offered. "It's also very popular, and the length shouldn't be as much of a problem,"

"If you wear nice knickers," Ken said helpfully.

"Well, we do sell some nice lacy French numbers.." The assistant said thoughtfully.

"I'm _sold_," Yohji said triumphantly. The assistant wandered back over to see how the rest were doing.

Crawford had also been unable to find a costume long enough, but had flatly refused to wear a skirt. This meant he was now dressed in an English schoolboy costume, complete with a cap, a tie, blazer and an oversized catapult in the back pocket of his little shorts (that were closer to hotpants when worn by a giant foreigner). He had spent some time trying to fathom out what the included makeup was for, before Schuldig had used it to draw on freckles and an ink blot on his nose.

Aya and Ken had also been sorted out with costumes. Aya made the most pissed-off, downright homicidal looking fairy that any of them had ever seen, while Ken had ended up in a purple and leopard-print pimp suit and was just thankful that he wasn't wearing a skirt. Only Farfarello, Omi and Nagi were still wandering around, lost.

"What do you want to be?" Schuldig asked.

"A bunny," Farfarello said peacefully.

"A _dead_ bunny?" Schuldig asked hopefully. "The creepy one from _Donny Darko_? A roadkill bunny? One of those mutilated bunny suits worn by animal rights activists, with eyes hanging out and third degree burns everywhere?"

"_No_," Farfarello looked scandalised. "A nice bunny, please,"

"Okay," Schuldig said, turning to the assistant and continuing in a heavily sarcastic tone. "Does your teeny-tiny, Japanese-sizes-only store happen to have any Nice Bunny costumes that will fit a 6' Irishman?"

The woman blinked. "Of course, sir. Any particular type of bunny in mind? We have pink bunnies, lavender bunnies, pastel yellow bunnies, fluffy white bunnies, Playboy bunnies, sparkly bunnies, ballerina bunnies, pretty princess bunnies.. I'm afraid we just hired out the only 'Rose Pink' bunny costume we have in your size, but we do have plenty more in Candyfloss, Blossom Pink, Blush, Magenta..". Farfarello looked highly pleased.

"And what about you two?"

"How about.. something that matches?" Omi asked. "You know, a ..couple thing.." He paused. Schuldig looked oblivious, but still.. "Since Nagi is so little, someone might grab him and take him away to eat jelly and ice cream if they don't realise he's with an adult,"

Nagi looked furious, but couldn't protest and say anything about his mad assassinating skills or ability to turn someone inside out at twenty paces by just idly considering it. The assistant looked thoroughly charmed by the pair of them.

"That's so cute!" She said. "I have just the costume. It needs two people, it's not something that can work alone,"

Nagi and Omi grinned at each other in a sickeningly sweet manner. Crawford checked his watch.

"We'll take it," He said impatiently, whipping out his credit card. To her credit, the shop assistant managed to ring up the total while keeping a straight face, even though Crawford had forgotten to remove his freckles and inky nose.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Back at the flower shop, they had just half an hour to collect their weapons, form a cunning mission plan and get into their disguises. Therefore, twenty-nine-and-a-half of these minutes were dedicated to doing their makeup. Crawford carefully touched up the three adorable freckles on each cheek and the blue ink blob. Aya spent almost half an hour methodically working on the absolute minimum of sparkling pink lipgloss and eye glitter needed for his costume, before working out how to conceal a katana under a fluffy white minidress and glittery fairy wings. Schuldig borrowed Crawford's freckle-pen and spent the rest of the time trying to separate his hair into two ponytails. Yohji mostly wandered around trying to find anything that stood still long enough to be shoved down the front of his nurse's uniform. Although since he was currently wearing a bra stuffed with a pair of 'Boobie Boosters' breast enhancers (no one asked why Crawford had a pair of those) supplemented by six pairs of socks, Aya's horrible orange jumper, Farfarello's stuffed rabbit 'Mr Bunny' and Ken's underwear, he was already measuring in at an impressive 36KK chest.

Omi and Nagi had rushed indoors as soon as they got back to sort out their costumes. Nagi unfolded the outfit gleefully.

It was a pantomime horse.

Omi's lower lip wobbled. He had been having pleasant thoughts all the way back home. Doctor and nurse, devil and angel, nun and priest.. so many possibilities involving skimpy outfits and uniforms and kinky accessories..

"Front end or back?" Nagi asked, pulling out a giant pink horse's head, complete with a pink maribou mane, purple spots and the most frightening googly eyes that Omi had ever seen.

"I should probably take the back end," Omi said dully, as Nagi struggled into the horse's head part. He stepped into his own and enthusiastically embraced Nagi around the waist as they joined the two halves together. "You're very cruel to me, you know,"

"Hands!" Nagi shrieked, slapping them away as Schuldig ambled into the room searching for Aya's lipgloss.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Surprisingly, they made it to the venue quite on time.

Schuldig swaggered up to the gates as well as anyone could swagger in six-inch mary-janes and gave the security guard his most charming, winning smile, twirling a ponytail around his finger. The guard recoiled in horror, instinctively grabbing to make sure his gun was still there.

"Evening, my good sir," He greeted, inexplicably adopting an English accent which failed miserably to have the same effect when talking in Japanese and dressed as a 6' schoolgirl. "Lovely evening, isn't it? I say, you wouldn't mind stepping aside and letting us chaps in to visit old Takahashi, would you?"

"Names?" The security guard asked. Schuldig had completely forgotten the names that Omi had added when he'd hacked into Little Mitsuko's birthday party list. Still, he could bluff this.

"But of course!" He started, and then paused. More ponytail twirling. A minute or two passed in silence. "..I am Jim. And this is my good friend Jimmy. That's.. Jimathon, Jimfred, Jimsley, Jimbert, Jimathew and.. Jimmyjimmyjimson,"

Crawford winced visibly as the security guard frowned, considering the possibility that an American, an Irishman, a German, three Asians and one half-Asian would all be christened with variants of the name 'Jim', then shrugged and began to check the name list he had been given.

"Ah, fuck it," Schuldig growled, and promptly altered the security guard's memory to forget all about the eight of them. And also to have a sudden urge to eat the next guest's socks.

Inside, the guests were mingling in two main rooms. One was set aside for the children, and another where the adult guests were gathered. Lila broke up, merging into the crowd in a surprisingly sneaky manner for a group including a pink pantomime horse, a giant one-eyed bunny and no fewer than three men in dresses.

Farfarello was enjoying himself. First, he wandered off from the group in search of things to stab and instead found himself in the middle of the childrens' party. There weren't many things there which appeared on the "Things Farfarello Is Allowed To Stab" list that Crawford had gave him, but there _was_ jelly and ice cream and little plastic sporks that he stole for future stabbing purposes. Then there was the bouncy castle. It turned out Mitsuko was a little sadist too, and the pair of them spent half an hour teaming up to bounce smaller children clear off the castle, clocking up two broken arms, four lost teeth and a dislocated shoulder between them. Altogether, not bad. He'd came away from assassination missions with less carnage than this six year old's birthday party.

"That was fun!" Mitsuko said, jumping gleefully on a smaller classmate and twisting his arm behind his back in a way that made even Farfarello wince. "I liked it best when Chigusa fell off and her arm looked like it was on backwards! What do you wanna do now?"

"I have to go stab things," Farfarello said sadly, as Mitsuko began listing the possibilities- kicking the clown, popping the balloons, scaring the animals in the petting zoo.

"Aww.." Mitsuko said sadly, clambering off her victim as he finally stopped moving. "See you later, Mr Bunny! Can we play together some other time?"

"Maybe," Farfarello said, gathering a few more of those useful looking sporks. "You aren't looking for a job yet, are you?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - **- - - - - **

"Which way do we go?" Omi asked, for the nineteenth time. They'd split off from the others almost an hour ago and spent all that time wandering around the gardens looking for Takahashi and trying not to fall in the swimming pool or knock over any important guests.

"I can't see!" Nagi hissed, the giant horse head bobbing frantically as he tried to look out through the tiny eye holes. "I _think_ this is where the others went-"

"HORSIE!" A dozen children squealed at once.

"Run, Nagi! Run for the hills!" Omi screamed, unable to do anything. Nagi clumsily tried to turn around, too slow to avoid the avalanche of small children who leaped gleefully onto the pantomime horse's back. Omi made a pitiful "Oof," noise.

"Use your telekinesis to make them lighter?" He begged. Nagi tried, and accidentally flung a small child from Omi's back and bounced it off a famous politician who was standing nearby.

"HORSIE!" A particularly rotund little girl yelled, kicking Omi gleefully in the sides. The pantomime horse was now sagging visibly in the middle.

"GET IT OFF!" Omi bellowed. "GET IT OFF AND BURN IT! BURN IT WITH FIRE!"

"Oh shit," Nagi said. "That's Takahashi's little darling. We can't do anything,"

"Mitsuko!" Takahashi cried joyfully, popping up out of nowhere. "Is my little sweetheart having fun?"

"No! Make the pony go fast!" Mitsuko squealed, bouncing up and down. There was an alarming cracking noise coming from Omi's spine. He began to discreetly feel around for the tranquiliser darts he had shoved in his pocket as Nagi obediently began running, forcing Omi to follow. Mitsuko screamed with joy as they cantered around the room, leaping over a small coffee table.

"Think we should just kidnap her?" Nagi whispered, in despair. Takahashi was now taking photos and roaring with laughter over his demon spawn's antics. Omi's vertebrae were beginning to separate.

"Just a minute.." Omi muttered. He'd got hold of a dart.. he shoved it upward through the material and poked Mitsuko in the ankle, only to get kicked hard in the eye in retaliation. A minute later, the pantomime horse skidded to a halt just in time for Takahashi to grab his daughter as she fell unconscious from its back.

"All the excitement must have been too much for her," Nagi said breathlessly. "Happy birthday, Mitsuko!" And with that, they turned around and galloped back out of the room as fast as they could before any other parents cornered them.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ken was having fun. He had wandered in, merged into the crowd and grabbed some juice. Nice juice, too. Good and juicy. He began sauntering around the room in a deliberately casual manner to see what evil deeds he could overhear and what dastardly plans he could foil. He failed to notice that his sauntering was getting more and more erratic, or that he'd just flung his entire glass of Nice Juice straight down some unfortunate woman's cleavage, or wandered up to a group and began roaring with laughter over something that wasn't a joke, but actually a rather solemn discussion about Japan's diplomatic representations from the U.S.

"Great party!" Ken cheered, holding his glass up as he noticed Takahashi was among the group. There was a long moment of silence. Ken grinned some more, swaying fairly noticeably.

"Ah, it's... you. Haven't seen.. you in a long time," Takahashi finally said

"Yes," Ken beamed. "Good old me! That's who _I_ am,"

"Didn't you arrive with the giant bunny who put four children in hospital? And that nurse who keeps hitting on my wife, and that fairy who yelled 'Shi-ne!' and shoved her wand up Mr Sakuma's left nostril when he was just trying to get a spider off her b-"

"No, it wasn't me," Ken said, shaking his head determinedly.

"Are you sure?" Takahashi frowned. Ken woozily balanced his drink on his head.

"See? It can't be me, because _I've_ got a pint on my head," He said triumphantly, waving his free hand around dramatically to illustrate his point.

"..Oh," The man said and walked away quickly. Ken beamed proudly.

"What have you done?" The tallest schoolgirl he'd ever seen hissed at him. He squinted at her. She looked vaguely familiar. So did the giant nurse next to her. His jaw dropped as he took in the size of her chest.

_I'm Schuldig, you idiot. _The schoolgirl's voice drifted into his head.

"Oh," Ken blinked. "I was jus' talking to Mr Tashakahishakahi here about.. about..." He looked confused. "It was about... hey! You have really nice boobies," He congratulated the nurse. "I like boobies,"

Schuldig began tottering after Takahashi as fast as he could, which wasn't very fast in six-inch heels, superhuman speed or not. Yohji joined him, sauntering past and casually waving his giant bosoms in Takahashi's general direction.

"Ladies," Takahashi greeted them with an enormous grin. "Are we enjoying ourselves?"

"It's beginning to look up.." Schuldig breathed, twirling his ponytail playfully. The ends were now beginning to irreversibly dreadlock. "How about you?"

"It's been a nightmare," Takahashi said. "Kids everywhere, and for some reason the hired security tried to eat Mr Nakamura's socks! And my little Mitsuko was all worn out in no time- too much fresh air and fun and games!"

"That sounds terrible," Schuldig murmured sympathetically. He began poking around in Takahashi's mind. Good, the arrangements for bringing the Rosenkreuz agents were there, due to arrive at- he was suddenly distracted as a filthy thought involving himself floated across Takahashi's mind. Himself and Yohji wrestling in a swimming pool filled with strawberries and chocolate syrup. He might be an evil corporate overlord, but damn, the man didn't have bad taste and Schuldig was not one to turn down free porn. Oh good, there were marshmallows involved now. Marshmallows and.. the pair of them wearing nothing but divers' helmets and yellow rubber waders and spanking Takahashi with a trout! And was that an edible thong Takahashi's fantasy-self was wearing? Schuldig had to get out, now.

"I'm going to go look after my friend," Schuldig said, glancing hopefully in the direction Ken had gone. "Who may have had a teeny bit too much to drink. I'll be right back," He managed a forced giggle and then began tottering off as fast as he could, cheerfully abandoning Yohji to Takahashi and his sick fantasies.

"So, it's just you and me now.." Takahashi breathed, one hand on Yohji's shoulder, his eyes fixed on the front of Yohji's stuffed uniform. "Why don't I give you the private tour of my home?"

Yohji considered. If he went with Takahashi, he could discreetly kill the target out of sight, hide the corpse and be back in time to grab some birthday cake when they finally got round to cutting it. But then the hand slid lower and without warning, suddenly clamped onto his left buttock. His infamous, prized left buttock known throughout Japan, the buttock that never failed to draw gasps of admiration when first unveiled to a new lover. He desperately needed rescuing. Yohji looked around frantically.

"Please, Flying Spaghetti Monster," He begged silently. "If you're really out there, please send me a miracle,"

His miracle arrived in the form of a googly-eyed, pink pantomime horse galloping straight towards him from the childrens' room. Yohji threw himself into its path in despair, was knocked off his feet and dragged along. He triumphantly hauled himself aboard the pantomime horse, reached into his dress and hurled his bosoms at a shocked Takahashi as he was carried off to freedom. Aya's orange jumper wrapped around Takahashi's face, Farfarello's Mr Bunny bounced off his head, assorted socks showered the guests, Ken's underwear ended up floating in a punch bowl and a fairly prominent politician choked on the left "Boobie Booster" after it landed in his drink.

"All praise our noodly master!" Yohji cried ecstatically as the pantomime horse galloped away into the sunset.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ken wouldn't have minded if he was captured while.. say, hovering behind Takahashi looking threatening, bugnuks out, ready to rip him out some spinal cord. But truthfully, security took him in an hour later after finding him paddling around in the punch bowl wearing Mitsuko's birthday cake on his head and making pirate noises, convinced he was the life and soul of the party.

They were all there in a dungeon that Takahashi inexplicably had somewhere in his mansion, hanging from the walls in handcuffs. Omi and Nagi were wearing nothing but some wrapping paper and strategically placed confetti. Ken was beginning to sober up very rapidly indeed.

"How did you all get caught?" He asked, noticing their expressions collectively fall when the last member of Lila was dragged in too.

"Saw something shiny," Farfarello said apologetically.

"Yohji was thinking very loudly about naked ladies," Schuldig said accusingly. "Dipped in strawberry icecream,"

"I was thinking about naked ladies," Yohji concurred. "Dipped in strawberry icecream,"

"Omi? Nagi?"

"Our clothes fell off. Stupid cheap costumes! And then when we were streaking through the party to get away from security, there were these psychic female assassins dressed up as Playboy bunnies..." Omi sounded so distressed that Ken didn't have the heart to pursue it. Schuldig nodded understandingly. It happened to the best of them.

"Aya?"

Aya scowled. "We were overwhelmed,"

"He jumped off a high building yelling 'Shi-ne!' and twisted his ankle," Crawford said helpfully.

"Why didn't you see this coming?"

"Because I was too busy fending off a security guard who was trying to eat my socks, and took me in for resisting," Crawford glared at Schuldig. "I hope you have a plan for getting us out of here,"

Schuldig shrugged, which was fairly hard to do when hanging from a wall. "I'll control the mind of the next person who comes in here. Problem solved,"

"But I'm boooored now," Omi cried, swinging fretfully from his handcuffs. "And I'm thirsty and Nagi keeps hitting me,"

"Am not," Nagi said, annoyed. Omi gave him a look.

"I don't want to be hanging here all night," He stage-whispered. "Didn't you ever get cranky on long car rides when you were a kid?"

"Oh," Nagi nodded understandingly. He scrunched up his face, kicked Omi enthusiastically and wailed. "He started it! And I think I'm going to be sick,"

"I really am," Ken said apologetically. "I swear, I didn't know it was alcohol.."

They all swung in silence for a minute. Nagi explained for the fifth time that yes, he probably could telekinetically rip someone out of their handcuffs, but he couldn't absolutely guarantee that he wouldn't leave their wrists behind. Schuldig helpfully told everyone about what he'd found in Takahashi's mind, and that the reason why he had a dungeon was probably to indulge his sick trout-spanking fantasies in. After hearing this, Aya somehow tied himself into a double French bowline knot by squirming up the wall and trying to wriggle his way to freedom. Crawford tried to See the future and whatever dismal fate lay ahead of them, but only managed to spoil tomorrow's episode of his favourite soap opera for himself. So he ruined it for everyone else too, and once the squabbling had died down, they all resumed thinking about how to escape.

Schuldig suddenly looked inspired. "Farfarello, do that disgusting thing where you turn yourself inside out,"

Farfarello looked puzzled.

"The.. _thing_," Schuldig said vaguely. "Whatever it is you do to get out of chains. And straitjackets. Straitjackets with padlocks and extra straps and Rottweilers patrolling around the perimeter. While hanging from the ceiling. Upside down. Surrounded by a moat of flaming lava and hanging over a vat of custard,"

"_Oh_," Farfarello said, understanding. "That's easy. I just dislocate my shoulder, like this.."

"Ew!"

"And snap my left wrist, as so.." There was a loud crunch. "And separate a few vertebrae so my spine will bend _this_ way instead.." There was an alarming popping sound. "And then by simply breaking most of the bones in your hand so it goes all squashy and flexible, you can easily get out of the handcuffs!" Farfarello fell to the floor with a crunchy sort of thump and didn't move for a few minutes.

Once they were all freed and Omi and Nagi had found their clothes, they began discreetly sneaking back out of the mansion. It turned out there wasn't much need for it, since the party had ended a long time ago.

"Oh well," Omi said optimistically, stealing the remains of the birthday cake. "How bad can those Rosenkreuz agents really be? It's two teenage girls against all eight of us,"

"We'll be fine," Nagi agreed, wondering how Omi could still look quite attractive when dressed as the back end of a pantomime horse galloping around by itself. As he began to follow Omi out, Nagi twitched. He had a sudden, inexplicable urge to go home, turn up Evanescence, borrow one of Farf's razor blades and... he blinked, and was back to normal. Shaking his head, he followed the others back out.

Farfarello had stayed behind to retrieve Mr Bunny. A strange look crossed his face as he found the stuffed rabbit floating around sadly in the punch bowl.

"Must.. find... blender.."


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Notes- This is a slight interlude from ongoing events as the next chapter is finished (and I'm super happy with it), but is a little short. In fact, this is a sneaky excuse to beg for fanon/fanfic cliches to include. I've got a few- sexgod!Aya, blender!Farf, tragicdickensianstreetorphan!Schu, etc., but I could do with more, especially for Omi, Crawford and Ken.

This one is mostly Schwarz-centric, but there's plenty of Weiss in the next chapter. Mitsuko makes a quick appearance, but she won't be a regular. Tot also finally appears. She's fun to write, so she'll probably stay around. Especially since she's one of those seemingly innocent characters (Aeris!) that I can see as being a sneaky, pervy yaoi fangirl at heart, so it wasn't too complicated to get around the Omi/Nagi problem.

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

- - - - - - - -

"Morning, Farfarello,"

"Stab," Farfarello answered politely, currently pondering the pointy merits of a small, ornamental teaspoon. He considered its sharp end (more accurately described as a 'less blunt' end that could possibly result in impalement if projected at a suitably high speed), then considered the structural integrity of various parts of Schuldig, then pointed it at him thoughtfully.

"It's too early for this," Nagi mumbled into his coffee, telekinetically removing the teaspoon from Farfarello and throwing it out the window, followed by a whisk, a banana and numerous other objects that could possibly result in some horrible, messy injury if they had a soft, squashy person at one end and an Irish psychopath at the other.

"Stab," Farfarello said grumpily. Nagi resumed attempting to butter his toast using a wooden spoon, then noticed Farfarello eyeing it curiously and telekinetically hurled that out the window too. There were a few moments of peace while everyone carried on with breakfast, albeit without any kitchen implements at all.

"Staaaab," Farfarello said dreamily from somewhere under the kitchen table, followed by a squelchy sort of noise. Crawford, who had just entered the room, swore and hopped over to the first aid kit, now bleeding profusely from his ankle.

"I thought I removed all the pointy objects," Nagi said, telekinetically smashing a packet of jam onto his toast and flattening it with his mind. Bits of toast splattered against the walls. He floated another piece of bread over to the toaster to try again.

"You did," Crawford began rummaging through the first aid kit. "He got me with a mixing bowl," He looked confused. Those things didn't even have corners, let alone pointy bits. Before the bandages, he found Farfarello's emergency, anti-stabbing medication and promptly administered it. The packet proudly advertised it as Stab-No-More, guaranteed to get straight to the source of mass-murdering sprees, not to be used alongside paracetemol containing products, users should avoid driving or operating heavy machinery, although nowhere near as much as they should avoid using them when unmedicated.

"He gets like this sometimes. I think he was brainwashed a bit too well at Rosenkreuz," Schuldig said, calmly stirring his tea with a strategically folded newspaper, and discovering his shortcake fingers had been confiscated as potential implements of stabbing.

"Stab," Farfarello said agreeably, and there was a mass scraping-of-chairs as everyone sat at the kitchen table promptly removed their ankles and other prized body parts from the region.

"You poor things," Omi said sympathetically, the mention of brainwashing and Rosenkreuz giving him horrible visions of torture and such. He was promptly given three bemused looks and one confused "Staaab?"

"Some of the best days of our life took place at Rosenkreuz," Crawford said, looking nostalgic and also extremely brainwashed. "Running around in gym knickers playing lacrosse, pillow fights in the dormitories when Matron wasn't looking, playing pranks on our stuffy old French teacher Mam'zelle Pamplemousse, midnight feasts with sardines and sausage rolls and lashings of ginger beer.. I was headgirl, you know,"

"All better," Farfarello emerged from underneath the table, back to his usual degree of homicidal tendencies, which was still higher than all known serial killers and world dictators combined, but less likely to be foolishly directed at a house full of seven highly skilled assassins.

- - - -

"We're out of Stab-No-More," Crawford had said. "Go take Farfarello to kill something,"

The problem was that firstly, people weren't exactly queuing up to be murdered, and secondly, Schuldig was lazy and didn't want to spend hours lurking in dark alleys in a sinister manner until someone bothered to wander past and discover exactly why mother always told them not to drink their taxi fare.

Now where could one find a stream of victims for Farfarello? Where did the media always make dire warnings about psychos killing off innocent young things who blundered into danger? There was a beep, and he idly checked his phone. Another text from that annoying bint he'd met through Myspace. Should've just wiped her mind and been done with it.

Wait..

Myspace..

Schuldig's eyes lit up.

He began typing the profile that night and swiped Nagi's digital camera.

"Farf?" He asked. Farfarello glanced up from where he was laboriously crayoning a drawing that seemed to picture Schuldig. Schuldig was occupying all four corners of the paper. This was because none of the bits of Schuldig were connected to each other. He'd kill Crawford for suggesting art therapy.

"Look at me!" He aimed the camera. Farfarello glared at him with his sole eye. Well, it wasn't really a glare. Schuldig recognised it as Farfarello's mellow, heavily-sedated, at-peace face. It was just the rest of the world saw it as Farfarello's I-want-to-remove-your-left-lung-through-your-right-eye-socket face. Farfarello did in fact have an "I-want-to-remove-your-left-lung-through-your-right-eye-socket" face but none of the witnesses were capable of giving a good description of it afterwards, perhaps due to being mono-lunged and in the refractory stages of hypovalaemic shock.

"Alright.. turn to the side a little?" He asked. That was his "missing eye" side. Probably not good, even if Johnny Depp had done his best for pirate chic.

"Let's try the other," He suggested, and stared at Farfarello's three scars through the lens. This wasn't working. Farfarello would probably end up getting some award for heroic contributions to the field of self-injury and they'd be overrun with more admiring followers than he could possibly get through in a week.

Inspired, Schuldig yanked off his sunglasses and shoved them on Farfarello's face. "Aaand, turn back to the right!" He said triumphantly, before clambering onto a chair, turning the flash up as high as it would go and taking a classical Myspace shot, with a few bandages just coyly hinted at around the edges of the photo.

Right. Next he needed a name, preferably one non-demonic. "Farfsley? Farfred? Farfathon?" Schuldig pondered out loud. Nagi gave him a weird, weird look and decided he didn't need his digital camera back just yet.

Age. "How old are you?" He asked. Farfarello shrugged. He sometimes got a cheery little birthday candle shoved into his morning pills every now and then. It wasn't much good for stabbing things with and the flame went out too quickly to burn stuff, so he never paid much attention.

"Nineteen," Crawford answered, not looking up from his newspaper.

"Alright, he can be twenty-five," Schuldig typed away chirpily. Sexual orientation, eh? He hadn't seen Farfarello take an interest in anything unless he was allowed to dissect them alive.

"Farf, are you gay?" He wondered how many people in the world had the balls to come straight out and ask someone with Farfarello's resume of killing stuff whether he was gay or not.

Farfarello looked blank.

"Would you rather kill a man or a lady?" He asked. Farfarello looked hopeful.

"Both, please," He answered and then went back to colouring in when there was no sign of an offered man or lady. He was having difficulty staying between the lines. That's what happens when you murder your whole family at a young age and get thrown into an asylum. You lose out on valuable crayoning skills. It's even worse if you go ahead and yank out your own eye. No depth perception, see. Schuldig made a note to give Farfarello a sticky gold star when he was finished. He wasn't doing badly at all.

Alright, bisexual it was. Occupation was trickier. Schuldig drummed his fingers thoughtfully. 'Assassin' sounded edgy, nice sort of 'James Bond' connotations maybe. Might attract all sorts of sexy dangerous women. But then Farfarello wasn't suave, English or in the habit of wearing a suit. What did Irishmen do besides kill things anyway? Be a leprechaun? Professional barfighter? Sing in boy bands? Schuldig finally settled on "Theologist-slash-pathologist". Anything ending in -ologist sounded impressive, and it wasn't much of a lie. There often was theology, followed by slashing, followed by dissection, although not really to confirm the cause of death since Farfarello usually had a fairly good idea what that was.

Interests.. interests. What did women like anyway? He'd told a girl once that he liked cooking and she seemed impressed, although he had to wipe her mind to convince her that the charred toast he'd just made was actually a three course gourmet meal. And strictly speaking, it _wasn't_ a lie. Farfarello was quite attached to several kitchen implements. He particularly enjoyed the blender, the microwave, the knives and had even formed an attachment to a pastry brush on one memorable occasion. Schuldig hadn't asked why. He'd been sorry enough that he'd asked about the lemon juicer.

Anyway, if Farf ever combined his love of burning things with his attachment to kitchen utensils they'd probably end up with.. well, a scorched and hacked up corpse, which was what Crawford pulled out of the oven every Christmas and _he_ claimed it was cooking. Schuldig glanced over. Farfarello was now busily crayoning in something that resembled a kidney. Schuldig's kidney, in fact. He optimistically added "Watercolour painting" below "Gourmet cooking", then paused and added "First aid training" under the Skills section. Farfarello had quite a good knowledge of human anatomy, even if he thought of organs as "that noodly purple bit" and "the wobbly long squashy thing" rather than by their technical terms, and enjoyed yanking them out rather than putting them back where they belonged.

And done. He posted it, pleased with himself.

- - - - - - - - - -

There was an almost immediate response, and Farfarello went off for a night of good clean murdering fun, except his date for the evening was under four feet tall from her pink Mary Janes to the top of the big pink ribbon adorning her hair, and looking adorable in a pink frilly dress and pink lacy ankle socks.

"UNKIE FARFIE!" She squealed, running across the room and throwing herself rather violently against Farfarello, in a way that would probably have hurt like hell if he felt pain. He looked down, confused. It wasn't very often that things baffled Farfarello either. He had been quite calm about the idea of working with a clairvoyant, a telepath and a telekinetic, all of dubious sanity and questionable morals. Mass-murder never fazed him either. And he had been positively tranquil about raising undead deities.

"What," Farfarello said. It wasn't even a question.

"Some old bitch was watching me and asking what I was doing out here on my own," Mitsuko said, removing herself from Farfarello's left leg with dignity. "I couldn't say I was off on a blind date with an internet psycho, could I? I told her my Uncle Farfarello was taking me to get ice cream," She smiled sweetly. "So I think you should. Otherwise she might get you arrested,"

"You're six years old," Farfarello pointed out there was a fairly high chance of being arrested anyway, although the thought of the Japanese equivalent of an entire SWAT team to massacre was very tempting. Schuldig sure was smart.

"Worth a try," Mitsuko shrugged, impatiently dragging him off to the nearest ice-cream shop.

"I want one scoop of cinnamon crunch, one of bubblegum, one of coffee... umm, two scoops of strawberry and three scoops of green tea. No, make that four. And on top, I want sprinkles, marshmallows, whipped cream, sherbert, wasabi, chopped almonds, strawberry syrup and ketchup,"

"And to drink?"

"A pint. Of tequila," She said, and then narrowed her eyes threateningly. "And don't forget the straw or the sparkly umbrella. Or he'll kill you,". The waiter ran off and came back with Mitsuko's unholy ice cream creation, and the pint of tequila.

"You do know I was there to kill your parents, right?" Farfarello asked, as she began enthusiastically working her way through the ketchup, bubblegum and wasabi flavoured conoction.

"Yeah, I figured it out," She shrugged. "Well, if you did, I thought everyone might feel sorry for me and get me a new pony. The old one is so-oo boring. There was one at my party that was really fun though! What happened to it?"

"That pony died," Farfarello said hastily.

"Liar," Mitsuko said cheerfully. "Can we go steal a pony later? You can kill some as long as I get to keep one. A pretty one. A girl pony, one that can run really fast. White, with long eyelashes and a silky mane I can braid ribbons in. And if you could train her to attack people, that would be really cool as well. I think I'll call her Honeysuckle Peaches the Third,"

Farfarello didn't ask what had happened to Honeysuckle Peaches V.1 and Honeysuckle Peaches the Second, but finished the date by dropping Mitsuko back outside the gates of her family home along with a stolen pony, a stolen crate of tequila and his phone number for her to ring in twelve years' time. Or earlier, if she had any persistent boyfriends or pesky teachers she wanted disposing of.

"Lots of stabby good fun?" Schuldig enquired once he arrived back home, then read Farfarello's mind. "Whoops. I tried. Well, wait till you see the babe who emailed you today,"

- - - - - - - - -

The second date skipped cheerfully up to the apartment, cavorted merrily up the drainpipe and somehow managed to flounce her way through the six inch wide air vent, prancing silently into Farfarello's room and greeted him with a playful poke. From behind, with a sharpened concealed weapon.

"Oh no," Farfarello said miserably, then extracted four inches of pointy umbrella from his left atrium.

"There," Tot said firmly, polishing her umbrella off on the carpet. "Now we're even. Take Tot out to say sorry, and maybe she will stop stabbing you!" She giggled and danced off, dragging a sullen Farfarello behind her. Unfortunately, he was also not allowed to murder this one, since if she didn't kill him first, once he returned home Nagi would probably telekinetically smash him through every wall between here and Ireland.

"Why can't you stay dead?" He asked wistfully as she towed him away, chatting cheerfully all the way. He could possible tolerate a Zombietot who merely tried to eat his brain instead of destroying it with fluff and giggles and sometimes pointy umbrellas. "And why me? Why don't you grab Nagi and take him on a date? He's smaller and cuter and hasn't murdered you once,"

"You owe me some ice-cream at least! Besides, I think Nagi is seeing Omi," Tot whispered in a confidential tone, her eyes huge. "Don't you think that's so _kawaiiiii?_ I love yaoi!"

"Yaoi?" Farfarello asked, mystified. He had a passing acquaintance with hardcore gay porn as anyone living in a house with seven men would inevitably find, but he had managed to avoid yaoi. He regretted saying that after Tot bounced up and down gleefully, and then dragged him into the nearest manga store. Once they had emerged, Farfarello was considerably more subdued. Nothing else she could expose him to that evening would be worse than the twinkliest, girliest, fluffiest, most unanatomically unlikely yaoi she had managed to show him.

"Here's a good restaurant!" Tot said cheerfully. "But first.. now say sorry for murdering me," She said firmly.

"But you're picking on me now," Farfarello said dolefully, then stopped at she waved her umbrella menacingly. On the good side, if she stabbed him, he might pass out from blood loss and maybe even be taken to hospital by some kindly passer-by. On the bad side, he might be dead. "Ok, sorry," He muttered, the urge to stab rising.

"_Nicely_,"

"You do this on purpose, don't you?" Farfarello said miserably. She wasn't cute and fluffy at all. Tot gave him a sly look. Then jabbed him repeatedly, until she was satisfied with the quality of his apology. Unfortunately, the restaurant she had planned to visit had a strict dress code that didn't include multiple stab wounds, and so they ended up somewhere less classy. On the way, he wished even more that Mitsuko was at least fourteen or so, so that he could introduce them. Like everyone else, he liked to think that Schreient had been full of all sorts of naughty lesbian shenanigans. On the downside, they could possibly take over the world through either their combined fluffiness or just by stabbing things until they stopped moving.

"I feel no pain," Farfarello reminded himself, as the starter arrived. Tot had ordered ice-cream for starters, ice-cream for the main course, and quadruple-chocolate-fudge cake for dessert. With ice-cream on the side. He decided not to order anything at all once she had began sharing her plans to video her own live-action yaoi, which would unfortunately involve her infilitrating his home and strategically installing cameras everywhere. He made a note to horrify her by taking her to see some actual gay porn that was full of large muscly, bearded men. With mullets.

"I feel no pain," Farfarello repeated desperately, as her main course arrived and Tot began a long monologue about the virtues of strawberry fluff ice-cream versus banoffee with extra hot fudge. It appeared there were many ice-creamy factors he had never thought to take into consideration besides whether it was tasty or not.

"I feel no pain," He whimpered as she dragged him off to a cinema (featuring a special chick-flicks night), a funfair (for candyfloss, not for going near a big scary rollercoaster that he could possibly hurl himself and/or her from the top of) and a zoo (to spend the next hour alternately skipping between Bunnyville, Kitten Corner and Ponyland).

After that, things went a little bit stabby.

- - - - - - - - - -

"Did you kill her?" Schuldig asked, as Farfarello squelched moodily into the apartment, looking somewhat more damp, red and generally bloodstained than usual. "Again?"

Upon hearing that, Nagi had a spirited attempt at telekinetically assisting Farfarello back to Ireland, but unfortunately didn't have enough space to get up sufficient speed, and the wall only cracked slightly. Farfarello cracked more.

"Most of the blood is mine," Farfarello said grumpily, picking himself up off the floor and returning all displaced joints to their original locations.

"That was fun!" Tot squealed, shoving her way into the kitchen as Schuldig telepathically picked up an impression of ribbons, kittens and naked Nagis, and desperately tried to barricade the door before she made it into the house. "Hi, Nagi!"

"Hi, Tot. Nice to see you're.. umm, alive and well again," Nagi said, hugging her back as she pounced on him, then freezing as she whispered something Farfarello knew would be extremely lewd and involving Omi and probably strawberry fluff ice-cream. Tot settled herself comfortably on one of the kitchen chairs. She didn't appear to be leaving.

"She may be useful," Aya said, despite keeping his distance from Tot as much as possible. Calm, legally sane female things named Sakura confused him enough, let alone excitable, weapon-wielding female things. "YaoiRoxx and MistressCalicoFujimiya probably haven't accounted for her in their evil plans,"

"Yayyyy!" Tot leapt across the room and smashed Aya flat against the wall, despite weighing in at maybe a hundred pounds on a fat day. He looked extremely uncomfortable with an armful of enthusiastic, fluffy girl, and even more uncomfortable when she whispered something to him that probably involved his purely platonic relationship with Crawford. Or Ken, or Yohji, or Schuldig. Tot was an equal opportunity pervert.

"So you're saying Tot can stay?" She asked, blinking her long dark eyelashes innocently. Omi was almost wafted out of the window by the ensuring breeze. "Tot makes yummy brownies and is _very _good at making things dead," She clasped her hands together and waited to see if anyone would protest, and shrieked gleefully when no one did, running off to investigate her new home.

Aya was still stunned and shaking silently in the corner from actually touching a girl who wasn't a safely comatose relative.

Crawford could See very bad and painful things happening if he tried to forcibly remove an armful of shrieking, wriggling, biting Tot. He could also See that she would indeed be a bountiful source of brownies and naked Aya photos.

Nagi was won over by whispered offerings of unlimited strawberry fluff icecream.

Ken liked brownies, had experience working with small, easily aggravated children and was just glad it wasn't the Schrient member who had liked to try and spank him whenever they met.

Omi was slightly envious. Nagi had never brought _him_ back from the dead. However, he didn't want to look like some kind of jealous harpy, so he pretended he was being very mature about it. Also, he could see that she would come in handy when planning missions because he could send her out first to see if there were any genetic mutants, heavily armed maniacs or spiked pits lurking ahead.

Yohji was relieved that Tot was very, undoubtably female, since bringing back ladies to a place filled with his seven male 'housemates' was getting him a lot of odd looks.

Schuldig had ran away from the mental assault of fluff and rainbows, and the possibly impeding physical assault of spiked umbrellas, and therefore was not available for comment.

And Farfarello had quietly passed out from bloodloss five minutes ago.


	4. Chapter 4

Eingkeit Macht Stark

Author's Notes- ...And back to the previous plot again!

I don't have much Weiss stuff for uploading at the moment (I seem to have temporarily packed up my toys and gone to play in the Yami No Matsuei sandpit), and so although I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, I thought I'd upload before I forgot it existed altogether. Once again, a lot of this plays on fanfic cliches and I'm not saying they're automatically bad- ideas are often done to death because they're good, and I write a lot of them myself.

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

- - - - - - -

"Bureaucracy!" Omi exploded, throwing a handful of forms in the air in frustration. Paperwork was even worse when you were an assassin and had to lovingly detail the outcome of every incident when someone grazed their elbow leaping off a roof top, dropped a crossbow on their foot or had a chunk taken out of their buttock when being chased by a rampaging, tentacled genetic mutant. And now Tot was hanging out with them, he had to be extra specially careful to make sure nothing anyone said could ever be interpreted as sexism, which meant shouting at Yohji every time he tried to make her a cup of tea or held a door open for her. Guaranteed, Tot actually _wasn't_ capable of making a cup of tea, but until Yohji memorised Omi's little disclaimer about "I know you're an empowered womyn perfectly capable of making your own hot beverage of choice..", it was safer to avoid it altogether.

It also made things very difficult when technically he and Nagi should shut their eyes whenever they saw possibly 18 rated scenes of violence and/or a sexual nature, even if they were typically the cause of the first scenes and enthusiastic, naked participants in the second. At least Schwarz helped them to look as though they truly were equal opportunity by adding three more nationalities to the team. Before that, he had to keep desperately playing up Yohji's one American parent and claiming that Ken's great-granny had been half-Indian and was also a lesbian, probably. Unfortunately, he now had to make sure that all mission plans were also written in English, German and Irish Gaelic, although all three were fluent in Japanese and the only Gaelic Farfarello had ever learned was as a five year old in the playground, and therefore roughly translated along the lines of "Bumhead!" and "Poobrain!".

He glanced up. At this point, Nagi would often come by to deliver a soothing cup of tea or an equally stress-relieving lapdance, but he had yet to show up today. Omi went over to the bedroom to find him and shrieked.

- - - - - - - - -

That same morning while Omi was busily sorting out paperwork, Schuldig came downstairs and headed outside for his morning cigarette. Yohji was already there, puffing away contentedly.

"Wait one second," Schuldig said, suspiciously eyeing his cigarette at arm's length as though it had just attempted to take a bite out of his nose. "Since when have I ever smoked?"

"..That's a very good point," Yohji said. "I guess we'll never find out- what!"

Yohji had just caught sight of his own reflection in the window and realised he was wearing two small pieces of not-very-strategically-placed tape across his nipples and a sparkly pink chainmail thong decorated with maribou pompoms and ostrich feathers. The outfit covered around 5 percent of his exposed skin.

"But.. why would I dress like this?" Yohji asked, confused by the monstrosity he had apparently found in his wardrobe and wondering what the hell he had got up to last night. "I show off a bit of tummy, yes-"

"And a bit of arse, yes," Ken confirmed, wandering past for no apparent reason.

"But I'm not the strumpet of Weiss!" Yohji said indignantly, turning around to inspect himself. "Although I must say, it _is_ growing on me,"

"It's shrinking on you if anything," Schuldig said, eyeing Yohji dubiously. "You look like a prostitute,"

"Yeah, well I guess you'd know about that,"

"What do you mean?"

"You lived on the streets since you were twelve weeks old, remember? Your abusive daddy threw you out, you were a drug addict by four, a prostitute by ten, raised by a family of friendly sewer rats who were all tragically murdered when you were thirteen.."

"Ahhh.." Schuldig said, and remembered.

The scene.. a snowy, Victorian street somewhere. A small, orange-haired street urchin is hopping mournfully around on a single crutch, almost being flattened by hackney cabs and cheerful chimney sweeps dancing around singing a musical number and waving their brooms about with blatant disregard for the poor ailing orphans around them. He spots a penny in the gutter and tries to grab it, only for a rich looking man in a top hat to hit him with his cane, and grab the penny himself.

"Huzzah!" The man roared gleefully. "More pennies for me to buy claret and snuff and small boys to shove up the chimney or work to death in my factories! Trying to steal it from me, you young ragamuffin?"

"God bless yer, good sir!" Schuldig cried, slowly getting back to his feet and shivering in the intense cold. "I didn't mean no 'arm, I didn't! Want me to shine yer shoes, guv'ner? Miscellaneous sexual favours? Me pimp will be right angry if I come back with nuffink. An' on Christmas too, 'ave an 'eart guv'ner-"

"Oh yes, I remember," Adult Schuldig said, sniffing. Both he and Yohji were now teary-eyed. Although somewhere in the back of his mind, he had a vague memory of family portraits featuring a smirking little Schuldig in a sailor suit, two doting parents, an enormous sprawling country house, an entire field of ponies, a quad bike, the full range of Action Man..

"And all that torment you went through at Rosenkreuz!" Yohji was now sobbing quite openly.

"What torment?" Crawford asked, wandering outside and suddenly looking blissful. "Rosenkreuz, now those were the days! I never thought I'd get a place there- my family were perfectly normal, you see, so when that owl arrived to tell me I had been accepted it was the happiest day of my life! I always knew there was something a bit magical about me! Well, when I wasn't too busy reading tea leaves and gazing into crystal balls, we were always off having a lark- eating chocolate frogs in the dormitories, running amok in the forest with hippogriffs and basilisks and kumquats.. I was Quidditch Captain, you know,"

His thoughts were interrupted as thick black smoke began pouring out of the kitchen.

"Oh, that Ken!" Yohji chuckled good naturedly, shaking his head at the familiar sight. "Always setting the kitchen on fire when he tries to make a cup of tea!" This was truly impressive as the tea in question was an iced beverage that required no more preparation than taking the pitcher out of the refrigerator and pouring it into a glass.

"Isn't this the same Ken who whipped up that lovely bouchee of escargots and morell mushrooms the other day?" Omi looked confused. It certainly hadn't looked like a McDonalds takeout anyway. "Never mind, we've got bigger problems than having to live without bouchees of escargots. There's something very wrong with Nagi,"

They knocked on Nagi's door.

"GO 'WAY!" Nagi screamed, telekinetically blasting them back out of the room, followed by a lethal hail of eyeliner pens, poetry written in red ink, most of Farfarello's pointy object collection and every track Linkin Park had ever produced, including the frontman's school concert rendition of 'Greensleeves' on the recorder, aged nine and a half.

"What happened to the moody, misanthropic little bastard we all knew and loved?" Schuldig asked sadly, untangling himself from the ceiling fan and plopping back onto the floor. Sure, Nagi had a bit of an awful past, but he generally didn't sulk and threaten to kill himself over it. He just went out and picked on someone smaller to make himself feel big and clever. And then killed them in a horrible, horrible manner, just like most of Schwarz did when they needed to relieve stress. Well, except Crawford. He preferred yoga, while listening to some godawful whale-music and panpipe CDs.

"It's terrible," Omi said. "He's lost interest in everything, especially se... that secretarial course he was studying,"

"It's because I'M FAT!" Nagi screamed. In the aftermath of a fit of telekinetic rage, Schuldig found himself back on the ceiling fan while Ken was blasted straight out the window and landed six streets away, flattening a passing nun. There was a distant cheer of "That hurt God!" from Farfarello. Schuldig removed himself once again and began considering the merits of having a ladder installed there for future episodes of teenage angst, before retreating to a safe distance, namely the kitchen.

"Ah, everything's normal here," Schuldig breathed a sigh of relief. There was only one member of Lila there, and thankfully Farfarello hadn't turned into a particularly melodramatic young goth or started considering a thong bikini ideal casual daywear. "Good old Farf, playing with his blender- wait, what's going on here?"

Farfarello looked up, surprised. "Just blending some bananas and milk-" He began mildly. Schuldig calmed down. Yummy, nutritious banana milkshake, nothing suspicious or strange here at all. Crawford used the blender to make poofy girly drinks all the time. Nothing sinister about having a nice smoothie.

"..Bananas and milk and BUNNIES AND PUPPIES AND KITTENS!" Farfarello continued, gleefully throwing a bag of small furry animals into the blender and hitting the button to turn it on. "God hates blending bunnies and puppies and kittens!"

"But _you_ like bunnies and puppies and kittens!" Schuldig said. It was true. Farfarello's favourite hobby might be live vivisection of his own species, but he always inexplicably teared up when he saw a bunny lying squashed by the side of the road and marked out massacres (aka major Christian holidays) on a calendar filled with photos showing endless baskets of sappy, big-eyed kittens with bows around their necks.

"I ...DO!" Farfarello looked shocked, and then yanked off the lid and reached in without bothering to turn it off first. Blood sprayed everywhere, followed by partly-blended small animals and Farfarello's right radial artery.

"Oh no," Farfarello said sadly, pulling out half a bunny. "Will it be okay?"

"It'll be fine," Schuldig said, wiping liquidised kitten from his face. "Why are you blending small animals? Is there a good reason other than the horrible powers of YaoiRoxx and MistressCalicoFujimiya?"

"Ah dunnae kinn. Aye, an' aam supposed tae be Irish, nae Scottish," Farfarello said, alarmed. "Whit's gonae oan?"

"This is all very worrying," Crawford frowned, wandering into the kitchen. "I suppose this means MistressCalicoFujimiya and YaoiRoxx are up to something. That's going to completely ruin my plans for today. And I was so looking forward to picking on everyone, hitting Farfarello a few times and then locking him up because I'm a big meanie like that,"

"Okay," Farfarello said placidly. "But you might end up bruising your hand. Some bits of me are awfully bony,"

"Yes, picking on Farfarello would be rather pointless," Schuldig frowned. "Not to mention suicidal. In fact, picking on a telekinetic, a telepath, a psychopath and four only _mildly_ less psychopathic assassins would be extremely suicidal. Crawford, is there something you want to talk to us about?"

"What? Oh no, I'm fine," Crawford said. "I just didn't really think that through, did I?"

Aya finally made his appearance. There was a long moment of awed silence as he came into the kitchen to the sound of heavenly orchestral music, surrounded by a sparkling golden glow and a sudden waft of violets in the air. He paused for a second in the door, tossing his silken crimson hair in a mysterious breeze that had sprang up, a seductive look in his lustrous amethyst orbs.

"You're looking unusually sharp, Aya," Ken said, finally breaking the silence. Aya was currently wearing skin-tight black latex trousers and a black mesh top decorated with straps, buckles, eyelets, laces, hooks, nuts, washers, bolts, 1.5" countersunk screws and other miscellaneous ironmongery. A touch of eyeliner and lipgloss finished the look off perfectly. Every female for miles around instantly fainted.

"Do you like it?" Aya asked coyly. "I imported it all from Hot Topic," He did a little twirl. Every male for miles around also instantly fainted at the sight of Aya's shiny, latex-clad, twirling backside.

It was difficult working in the flower shop that day. Even though a supermodel convention had apparently arrived in town and were all in dire need of a bunch of flowers and someone to tell their tragic lifestory to, Yohji had acquired a sudden disdain for all of them and couldn't take his eyes off Aya instead. Aya was acting oddly too. Instead of marching around with a perma-frown, bellowing at innocent small girls for looking at him funny and occasionally pausing to brood, he was now blushing and giggling every time one of his team mates so much as glanced in his general direction.

The door opened, and suddenly everything went slow-motion. Aya was transfixed. A beautiful girl stood there in the doorway, slowly tossing her rippling waves of ebony curls in a gentle breeze that had appeared from nowhere. A pure white glow surrounded her, and-

There was a bang, blood sprayed everywhere and the girl crumpled to the floor.

"Sorry!" Birman ran in, holding a gun. "I almost got here too late. I'm afraid YaoiRoxx and MistressCalicoFujimiya are beginning to make their influence known," She turned the corpse over. "As I thought. Aya, another five minutes and you'd have been completely under this mysterious girl's influence. You'd have fallen instantly in love and undergone a complete personality change,"

"Why don't they affect you?" Ken asked.

"As an existing female, I simply don't play a role in their fantasies," Birman shrugged. "I'm safe.. for now, anyway,"

At that moment, Tot disproved Birman's hypothesis as she wandered into the flower shop, tripped over her shoelaces, dropped an armful of potted plants, knocked over a display of petunias, walked backwards into another stack of expensive orchids, almost impaled Ken on the secateurs she was carrying and then finally fell over, flattening the shop cat with a nasty squelching noise.

"Whoopsie!" Tot said. For some reason, she had an odd vacant expression, her eyes were staring in opposite directions and her tongue was hanging out. "Don't mind me, I'm just a big stupidhead,"

"Avast! There be somethin' amiss with that wench. Sort it out, smartly now me beauty," Farfarello said, and then looked horrified at his sudden transformation into a pirate. "Begorrah, b'jaysus! Oi'm Oirish, to be sure! As feckin' Oirish as the lakes of Kilkenny!"

"I think we should probably hurry up and get this sorted," Omi said miserably, as Aya, Ken and Yohji all began eyeing him in a somewhat perverted manner, in the absence of a Nagi to molest.

- - - - - - - -

They had a vague idea where MistressCalicoFujimiya and YaoiRoxx might be hiding, but it took quite a while for them to get ready. Lila found out it took over an hour alone to prise your average angry telekinetic out of a black-painted bedroom, then another hour waiting in Accidents and Emergency for Farfarello to get stitched back together after a three hour self-mutilating spree to hurt God, then when they got back Ken had managed to set the kitchen on fire again and Tot had forgotten how to walk. Once they had taught Tot how to put one foot in front of the other, Yohji then insisted a sparkling thong bikini was ideal mission wear and wouldn't be talked into at least putting some pants on. Farfarello wasn't helping by running around yelling about hurting God and gleefully praising the blasphemy of Yohji's bikini, Nagi's nu-metal CDs and Ken's cooking. Crawford found it very difficult for him to get ready too, since Schuldig kept playing pranks on him and he was constantly sitting on whoopie cushions, stirring salt into his tea and discovering Schuldig had carefully cut the arse out of every single Armani suit he owned.

"Where do we go from here?" Omi wondered when they had finally reached the suspected location.

"Durrrr, don't ask me. I is too stupid," Tot said cheerfully, tripping over her own feet for the sixty-fifth time that day. She looked at her umbrella, confused. "It's so shiny! Ouch!" She squealed, having cut her finger on the business end.

Farfarello looked excited at the sight of blood. "Tot-accidentally-cutting-her-finger-on-umbrellas hurts God!"

"Eww, skanky girl! They have cooties," Yohji said, edging away from Tot and her disgusting second X chromosome, and closer towards Aya. Aya was beginning to show the signs of a minor breakdown after being constantly molested ever since he had left his room, by Crawford, Ken, Yohji, Farfarello, Omi, Schuldig, all the fangirls, the postman and the shop cat (before Tot had thankfully flattened it). He could even swear the small potted plant in the kitchen was giving him a slightly lecherous look.

"I like football," Ken said brightly. "Let's all go play football,", and jumped on the nearest vaguely spherical object, which was unfortunately Aya's latex-clad behind. Once he had been removed, they noticed that body part also emitted a serene white glow as well as being unspeakably perfect, just like every other part of Aya. It would make sneaking in the dark very difficult. Yohji patted ol' Leftie reassuringly and tried to convince himself there was no shame in having the second most perfect ass in Japan. He failed.

"I'm going to kill myself," He said mournfully. Aya's backside twinkled at him mysteriously, and he could have sworn it giggled coyly. "Except by 'myself', I mean 'Aya'. And when I say 'kill', I mean 'hump'. Oh God, Aya, your ass has the power to prevent suicide,"

Omi grabbed Nagi and began steering him in the general direction of Aya, very difficult while Nagi was determinedly trying to commit hara-kiri with a small caterpillar he'd found somewhere. Fortunately, Nagi had apparently forgotten he was telekinetic and he was relatively easy to steer around, pick on and generally molest at the moment, something that all people in the immediate area kept trying to take advantage of.

"Please can't I rest for a few minutes?" Aya begged, backing himself protectively against a wall. There was a distant screaming from fangirls as they began to close in once more.

"We're nearly there," Omi said. Not that it mattered, since most of the team were now completely useless. Nagi was too busy trying to kill himself or running away from people trying to rape him. Tot kept falling over things and forgetting how to kill stuff, despite being a professional assassin. Schuldig kept bursting into tears remembering his traumatic past. Yohji had caught a chill from wearing a bikini out on a mission and was turning an attractive shade of blue. Aya was being repeatedly molested by everyone. And Farfarello kept periodically yelling about how this or that hurt God in alternating Scottish, Cockney, Jamaican and pirate accents, which was really giving away their position even if the hordes of following fangirls didn't.

Somehow, they finally made it to the secret hideout. Unfortunately, not by stealthy sneaking. They simply shoved Aya out into the open where he promptly leaped around in a graceful manner to the sounds of a full orchestra that had apparently popped up from nowhere, single-handedly killing all two hundred and sixteen guards and their horde of guard-dinosaurs in under forty seconds without gaining so much as a scratch in the process. The rest of Lila simply sat back and basked in Aya's beauty while he cleared the path to their targets.

MistressCalicoFujimiya and YaoiRoxx were sat in front of a table with a word processor, several notebooks and pens.

"Ah, Lila. We've been expecting you," YaoiRoxx smirked, stroking a white Persian cat.

"And now.. just in time for the conclusion to this story," MistressCalicoFujimiya smirked more, spinning her pen like the deadly weapon it was. "I'm afraid we no longer have time for the tragic buildup I had planned. Rocks fall, everyone dies.. except an amnesiac Aya who crawls out from the wreckage, taken in by a mysterious girl he meets who nurses him back to health-"

"Wait, Aya loves Yohji!" YaoiRoxx said indignantly, slamming her pen down. "He wouldn't forget about him just like that-"

"Aya is not gay, YaoiRoxx!" MistressCalicoFujimiya span round to face her friend. "He is so obviously into girls. Well, except for that _whore_ Sakura, but that's just because she's an ugly slut who does nothing but _stalk_ him all the time. He never said anything about being gay-"

"Never said he was straight either!" YaoiRoxx said triumphantly. She grabbed the nearest pen and began scribbling.

"Oh, Yohji-" Aya said, stepping jerkily towards Yohji. "I love you very much,"

"I'm sorry," Yohji said woodenly. "I am in an abusive relationship with Crawford. It will not work. I must go kill myself now-"

"NO!" MistressCalicoFujimiya shrieked. "This isn't how it goes!" She knocked the pen from YaoiRoxx's hand and crossed out the lines, writing her own. There was an ominous rumble from the ceiling and a few pebbles began to rain down.

YaoiRoxx threw herself across the table, grabbing the pen and jamming it into MistressCalicoFujimiya's eye. MistressCalicoFujimiya shrieked and grabbed YaoiRoxx's hair, ripping out a double handful. YaoiRoxx retaliated by taking a bite out of her wrist, letting go when MistressCalicoFujimiya ripped out her spleen. YaoiRoxx made a swift recovery and then began triumphantly typing with her free hand while smashing MistressCalicoFujimiya head repeatedly against the floor with the other.

"yuo r teh ;uv of my life!" Aya declared romantically, unsure how he had even managed to pronounce ";uv". Then he was saved as MistressCalicoFujimiya emerged with only moderate brain damage and threw herself back into the fight.

"Ordinarily, I would really enjoy this," Yohji said shakily as the pair of them rolled back and forward across the floor, ripping away clothes, hair and occasionally eyeballs and other fairly optional body parts. "But I'm too worried I'm going to be wiped out of existence or forced to bang Aya,"

He did wonder for a moment why they weren't doing anything to seize the two girls' writing implements or actually kill them. Aya had fled into a tunnel screaming something about more fangirls. Omi and Nagi had followed shortly after, when none of their team would stop molesting them for two minutes while they got the job done. Ken had apparently seized to exist as anything more than a face in the background (Yohji found the answer when he tapped Ken on the shoulder and discovered he had in fact been replaced with a cardboard cutout without anyone noticing). Tot had forgotten how to breath and passed out. Farfarello was prodding her thoughtfully with a stick and probably considering what method of dismemberment would best hurt God. And Yohji, for some reason (probably because YaoiRoxx was currently winning), was unable to bring himself to actually touch a _girl_ without shuddering and coming over all nauseous.

Fortunately, nature took its course and the age old battle between yaoi and het fangirls played itself out without any need for outside interference. By the time Aya had shown up to save the day, out of breath and cursing himself for wearing latex, the two had already reduced each other to little more than a red smear and a collection of scattered body parts. Omi double-checked no one was looking, and discreetly pocketed YaoiRoxx's 79 chapter OmixNagi masterpiece on the way out.

A few days later, and everything was back to normal.

Aya was comfortably clad in his baggiest, oldest orange jumper, snarling at passing schoolgirls for looking at him funny and generally acting about as consciously seductive and alluring as the bastard lovechild of Bernard Manning and Ann Widdecombe. Nagi had gone back to taking out all his angst and teenage rage on the world instead of himself, and as a result, Lila's productivity and kill rate had increased by around 225 percent. Yohji finally put some pants on and made a full recovery from frostbite, although for a few days the fate of half his infamous left buttock was uncertain. Ken resumed pursuing his ambition to become an internationally renowned master chef. Farfarello's Irish accent was found safe and well, although the same could not be said about all the partially blended bunnies, puppies and kittens now splattered all over the Lila house. Schuldich stopped moping about his tragic, drug-addicted, prostituting past and went back to firmly believing he was probably the best person in the world, ever. And Tot made a dramatic recovery from having the intelligence of a brain-damaged goldfish. An independent IQ test revealed she was now at least as smart as the average golden retriever.


End file.
